"As a result of this battle -- as a direct result of this battle -- Abraham Lincoln will issue the Emancipation Proclamation that will begin the process that will eventually put an end to slavery in the United States of America," Holsworth says. He has come to the conclusion of his speech. "Today, it doesn't really matter where you're from, folks, or who your ancestors fought for. I'd like to encourage all of you to visit our national cemetery. There, you'll find the final remains of 4,776 Americans who, here on Sharpsburg Ridge on September 17, 1862, gave up all of their tomorrows so that this nation might have a new birth of freedom. Thank you."
His audience applauds. Somebody says, "That was wonderful!" Holsworth takes off his Smokey Bear hat and mops the sweat off his balding pate. Half a dozen people rush up to congratulate him. A couple from Oregon tell him that they've traveled cross-country, stopping in national parks all the way, and his speech was the best they've heard yet. Somebody else tells him he speaks with the cadence and the spirit of an inspired evangelist.
"I grew up in a Baptist church in Dallas, Texas," he says, smiling. "And we are evangelists here. Our religion is this battlefield. We love it more than words can describe."
He pulls out a pack of cigarettes. "Mind if I support the North Carolina economy?"
Nobody minds, so he lights one up, takes a long drag, and starts talking about how he came to work here. He'd spent 13 years teaching history in Dallas, but he got sick of middle school kids and decided to try something new. A Civil War buff since he was 7 years old, he'd been spending a couple of thousand dollars every summer visiting battlefields, so he decided to move to Virginia, where he'd be closer to them. "I was going to spend the rest of my life studying the Civil War," he says.
And he has. First, he started volunteering at Antietam; then, a couple years ago, he got a job as a seasonal ranger. Now, he works summers at Antietam and spends his winters writing freelance newspaper and magazine articles, many of them about the Civil War. These days, he's toying with the idea of writing a novel that would popularize the battle of Antietam the way Michael Shaara's bestselling novel The Killer Angels popularized the Battle of Gettysburg. "We've got so many human interest stories here," he says.
President Lincoln with Allan Pinkerton and Major General McClernand at Antietam after the battle
All these activities have the same goal: remembrance. "How do we thank those people who we'll never meet, who did these things 130 years ago?" he asks. "The answer is: We can come here and remember. We make them immortal when we remember."
They climb out of the blue-and-tan pickup truck, leaving the motor running, as if they're only going to take a quick look at the Cornfield and then move along. But they end up lingering for a while.
They look down at a sign titled "Every Stalk of Corn." It's illustrated with a Gardner photograph of dead soldiers lying next to a split-rail fence, and it quotes Union Gen. Joe Hooker's description of the Cornfield after the battle: "In the time I am writing, every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. It was never my fortune to witness a more bloody, dismal battlefield."
They read the sign, then stand for a long moment, silently staring out at the field where the tall grass trembles in the gentle breeze.
"I try to envision what they had to go through, what they did and how they did it," says Kevin Master, a 22-year-old college student from Palm, Pa. "I don't think the people of this country will do the things they did anymore. Attitudes change. Government changes. I don't know if people will fight."
"I don't know if people have that respect for the government anymore," says his fiancee, Barbara Decker.
"They're too much involved in material things," Master says, "and not what this country really stands for -- the democratic ideals."
They look at the Cornfield for another few moments, then climb back into the pickup and drive off, headed for Bloody Lane and the Burnside Bridge.
The Cornfield is quiet for a while, and then another car pulls up and two brothers step out. Their great-grandfather fought in a West Virginia regiment that stormed the Sunken Road, and they've come to see the battlefield. They, too, read the sign, and they, too, begin to stare silently out at the field of grass.
"It's just incredible to me the way these people fought," says John Pratt, 40, a corporate investigator from Mount Gilead, Ohio. "I think I wouldn't have done it. I wish I could, but I tend to think I would have looked for a wall somewhere to hide behind."
"I don't believe in war," says his brother Ray, 51, a steelworker from Weirton, W.Va. "I believe it's a waste. But I admire their courage. I don't think the generation we have now would fight that way."
"They kill each other in the street," says John. "They just won't fight for a cause."
"What a waste," Ray says, looking out at the field where 10,000 men once fell. "When you think of the widows and the orphans -- what a waste."
In time, they, too, move on, and the Cornfield is quiet again. Across the rolling country road stands a beige farmhouse with a white satellite dish in the yard and red, green and purple clothes hanging out to dry. Little white butterflies dart playfully past metal plaques erected by the War Department a hundred years ago. Designed to teach military tactics to young soldiers, they are simple, matter-of-fact statements of where a regiment was and what it did. Here at the Cornfield, however, the various plaques end with chilling statistics: "Of the 550 engaged, 323 were killed or wounded," or "226 officers and men, of whom 186 were killed or wounded."
Now, a woman, two boys and a dog walk along the edge of the Cornfield and sit down on the base of a monument to the troops from New Jersey. It's a 20-foot-tall pedestal crowned with a statue of a soldier raising a sword over his head. The two boys -- Kevin Kunkel, 9, and his brother Scott, 10 -- are filling out the Junior Ranger activity booklet they got at the visitors center. Their mother, Debbie Kunkel, 40, is gazing out at the Cornfield.
General James Longstreet holding the horses for his staff while they worked Miller’s Battery of the Washington Artillery, September 17, 1862, Sharpsburg, MD
"I get goose bumps sitting here," she says. "I wonder, when it comes down to it, how many of us could pick up a gun and charge into the lines?"
She and her sons have come from Pennsylvania to camp nearby. They're here because she wants them to to learn about their country's history. "I don't think most Americans really understand the significance of this," she says. "I worry about the generation coming up. We have a really hard problem talking about slavery issues and black-white issues, and they need to be talked about."
She is a slender woman with curly hair. As she talks, she is petting the family sheep dog and looking out at the Cornfield, imagining the battle that was fought there and the soldiers who fought it. "I'm a psychologist," she says, "and I get into wondering what they were feeling. What gave them the courage?"
She thinks a moment, then tries to answer her own question. "You're in a situation where you've got two possibilities -- you win or you die. It's the fight-or-flight thing. I kill this individual or he kills me. There were also those who ran in fear -- more of them than we realize. Men would literally pick each other up and say, Let's go! Let's go!' I think in those days to be a coward was such a disgrace" -- she mimes the act of shooting herself -- "that you may as well do it yourself. I don't think we have as much of that now as we did then -- fighting was a way of life."
Her son Scott has finished his activity book, and she turns to him. "You're a 10-year-old," she says. "Could you pick up a drum and march to war?"
"I wouldn't want to," he says.
"Could you have done it?"
"I don't know."
They move on, heading off to see the rest of the battlefield. Other tourists come and go. Then the sun begins to set and the people stop coming.
To the west, the horizon is splashed with pink. To the south, a half moon hangs in a sky turning a darker shade of blue. There is no breeze at all, and the grass in the Cornfield is perfectly still. There is the sound of crickets and a motor running at a nearby farmhouse. The sky darkens. The motor stops. Far away, a train blows its whistle, then blows it again, then again. The whistle fades as the train moves on. Now the only sound is the chirp of a million crickets. A faint breeze rises. The grass quivers, then sways gently.
It's night now, and the Cornfield -- the bloodiest part of the bloodiest day in American history -- is as peaceful as any place on Earth.
Additional Sources:
www.wsu.edu/~jlance
www.pbs.org/civilwar
www.americaslibrary.gov
www.washingtonpost.com
civilwarprints.com
www.quartermaster.army.mil
www.wildwestweb.net
www.worldburnsclub.com
www.ferenzi.com
www.cob-net.org
www.kidport.com
webpages.marshall.edu
www.johnpaulstrain.com
www.pf-militarygallery.com
www.dixieprints.com
www.southernartcreations.com
www.gallon.com/gallery
www.alincolnbookshop.com
www.civil-war-life-clara-barton.com
www.historicalartprints.com